(Why I support Monero over Bitcoin.)
Then look at the numbers, besides speculation, which isn't really a "use case", that vast majority of cryptocurrency transactions are ransomware, coin washing, illegal purchases and currency control evasion.
> If cryptocurrencies can help people who don't have equal rights with more privacy in such situations then I am all for it.
> There is at least one third world country where a woman can't even get an abortion without risking life in prison. If cryptocurrencies can help people who don't have equal rights with more privacy in such situations then I am all for it.
What an extreme red herring? Even the most private cryptocurrencies are less private than the cash that such people use today for such transactions.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but this is just flat out wrong.
Also sorry I'm not able to provide tangible proof other than I have personally witnessed and been affected by the exact opposite of what you claim.
IBAN transactions big and small are extensively monitored and not on a one-by-one basis but rather used to paint a clear picture of economic actors and their interactions.
I've been using credit cards online for decades and I am yet to encounter anything negative from doing so. I get that my credit card provider knows that I'm buying £X of goods from merchant Y. But unless that merchant is very specific, the card company doesn't know what I've bought.
And, if it did... so what? Perhaps I'm naive, but even if I was hiding (for example) my sexuality - what's the CC company going to do? Try to upsell me a rainbow themed card?
I try to take my privacy seriously, and I don't particularly want my interactions monitored and mined. But what are the actual, non-theoretical problems that this causes?
But, for argument's sake let's say you can be put in jail or killed for your sexuality. You want to buy something from a specific store that caters exclusively to your sexual preferences. The CC company sells that to your government (or another entity wanting to enforce that), then you are arrested or killed, or you family harassed.
Basically people take for granted that they belong to the middle of the Gauss curve and forget this is neither true everywhere nor carved in stone, and certainly not consequence free.
Not to mention mass spying, which apparently every body is accepting now.
It feels like in the 30', where everybody is smooking cigarets and are think there is no problem right now with it, so they people raising concerns are not to be listened to.
"There's no need for privacy because I have nothing to hide."
Again, it’s a valid concern but the GP was about real world use cases and it seems that’s not really one?
And if this is the concern why not use cash or monero or whatever for this particular transaction, surely the concern does not extend to all other transactions you are making?
Perhaps the person didn't realize it would be an issue. Perhaps they bought something ancillary and they're not that store's main target customer.
Maybe don't live in a shithole country then. Use some of your money to move somewhere sensible.
When this data inevitable leaks via hacks, or is used to target you when political tides change, suddenly you will be wishing we had all been normalizing alternatives.
I recommend everyone use tumbled bitcoin, monero, cash, or visa gift cards whenever possible. The less data we all give in aggregate to those seeking to sell changes in our behavior the better.
Your data pollution empowers entities that harm us all.
So does your actual pollution created by transacting in cryptocurrency.
1) Able to donate money without it being blocked (examples: Wikileaks, eight-wing political activism).
2) No trace of activity that can be used against me (examples: WWII, looks like it might happen again in the near future, situation is tense post-COVID).
3) When the next recession hits, want to have protections against government haircuts (a la Cyprus or the bail in mechanisms that were prepared after 2008).
Cryptos fit quite neatly into a threat model where my government going rogue seems to be possible but unlikely. It makes a lot of sense to me to have $1-10k in Monero as a weird emergency fund/political tool. Dunno how it will work out, this isn't really territory that has been open before. If cryptos weather the next recession and hold >50% of their value then I'd start looking to put more serious money in.
I feel like you may have been auto-incorrected there, but I can't work out what you may have been trying to type that got changed to "haircuts".
Although to be fair those sort of manoeuvres generally mean that a bank is going under, so a % loss can be a better outcome than losing everything. It depends.
its not that the credit card company might sell you a rainbow card, its that you might not even get to exist.
Many things are illegal, but not immoral. You have probably broken the law in your life, most people have. ultimate surveillance is damaging to society as it strips away our ability to change "how things are done around here". I know a few sex workers whove had their bank accounts frozen and forced into cash/crypto, is that fair? are they really causing damage to society? theres many examples of sexism/racism from bank managers giving mortgages/loans with different rates depending on who they are talking to, could we use zkproofs to prove income/assets/liabilities without revealing personal information? amongst all the hype and speculation (caused by desperation in our current systems) crypto is about these issues and is doing real work to address them.
and thats before we even get into how things might change in the future. maybe its fine for a credit card company to know if you are gay today, what about in ten years? what if it becomes a crime again?
Other than the fact that "why do I need privacy, I'm not a criminal" (the battle cry of people who are lucky enough to have been raised in the 5 places on earth ruled by non-abusive governments) has been debunked a million times, you need to consider the fact that - just like the oodles of information gather on you by big tech - this gathering transforms you into a product, not a citizen.
Now, if you don't mind being treated like a shearable beast of burden, then, you're correct, that's not a problem.
First, the data is accessible by credit card provider, but also by several financial and technical intermediaries. Second, there is no way for any of those companies to guarantee that the data will never be leaked.
Then, in terms of consequences, it includes reputional risks, security risks people know your behavior patterns, and to be arrested for being at the wrong place and wrong time. Then is all the track record of governmental overreach that used this type of data, from arresting environmental activists to killings based on sexuality (for example). It happened in everywhere, and it still happens today.
In that it's proven possible and how the world worked for thousands of years. The existence of KYC/AML and the ability of the state to surveil their population's financial transactions is very new and less than a human lifetime old. It's not necessary and privacy is definitely not impossible.
Sure, in the western part of the world, you could think that this is paranoid, but depending on where you are in the world, and what minorities you belong to the risk is real.
Heck, even in the US with the way the SCOTUS is going, this may become relevant sooner than you'd expect.
(Also, we need a better term than "data brokers", as that term is biased toward their legitimacy. "Digital stalkers" or "stalkers for hire" imply that the stalking occurs after the point of hire, rather than being proactively performed on everybody. "Privacy abusers" is accurate, but non-specific. I don't have a term that would encompass the omnipresent spying, the danger of a dataset's existence against future threats, and the low price they put on our privacy. Bonus points if the term could call out the false dichotomy of public vs private.)
[0] https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7vzjb/location-data-abortio...
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/04/data-broker-safegraph-stops-...
Edit: That said, advocating for privacy is not advocating for cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrencies are by design massively inefficient, in the same way that a low-trust society is inefficient, and somehow touts that as a virtue.
But the merchant knows and (unless it's a very old mom & pop shop), they didn't do it manually, the itemized receipt is in their computer system. Which the government can easily obtain and correlate with the credit card transaction so now they have both.
As the downstream comments say, if you're any kind of persecuted minority, this is a big problem.
Or more importantly, something that is normal today but becomes illegal with some future government (or court).
Having a paper trail of everything in perpetuity is always dangerous in the future.
Best to use cash for most things.
I do this all the time in California and have in other states as well.
If you are sure your state bans non-reloadable visa gift card purchases with cash I would love to find out what state to research what is going on there.
Did you park at the market? Oops, they read all license plates to build a marketing profile.[0][1]
See an ad online, and then later went into the store? Oops, Google picked up on that and told the retailer.[2]
Did you leave your face uncovered when you went into the market? Oops, they use facial recognition.[3]
[0] https://www.syracuse.com/news/2014/06/who_else_is_tracking_y...
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20170523182250/https://www.washi...
[3] https://www.axios.com/2021/07/19/facial-recognition-retail-s...
Not even vaguely true of "exactly how does yashg use their credit cards", which many people can answer in as much detail as they care to purchase.
The billions (trillions these days?) online advertising market clearly disagrees with you.
In addition to that, even the few people people who do use Zcash, don't use it's privacy features. 99% of their transactions aren't private and are fully traceable [2]. Why would you want your transactions to stand out?
[1] http://zerocash-project.org/about_us [2] https://news.bitcoin.com/not-so-private-99-of-zcash-and-dash...